Much like the Royal Visit trope, but less obvious, is the Community Centre one. What is a community center? (I can’t keep up the British-Canadian spelling sorry.) I guess like a YMCA, or a JCC, except somehow more ubiquitous and silly.
As best as I can tell, going solely from these television shows, it’s a place where middle-class and working-class British people in the 1980s and 1990s availed themselves of dubious free services. Adult education, of varied quality.
Numerous “Waiting for God” episodes involve these locales, home of art classes, lesbian meetings, taxidermy, counselling the dying, helping the elderly avoid scam artists, keep-fit classes, and doubtless others I’m forgetting.
“One Foot in the Grave,” definitely they have a community center, because they go to one for an ill-fated fitness class for old people.
Is the “League of Gentlemen” job centre a community center? I vote yes, even if that means then additionally including the job centre “Waiting for God” scene.
And then there’s the Self Help Class from “Victoria Wood As Seen on TV,” which I listened to this morning for the first time, while walking my dog, and was laughing out loud on the street, because Julie Walters in this, oh my god.
This is by the way why it’s important to get your children into “Paddington” TV and film incarnations — you get your Julie Walters (Mrs. Bird, movies) and Reece Shearsmith (Mr. Curry, voice of cartoon).
“Downton Abbey,” no community center.
“Keeping Up Appearances,” “The Vicar of Dibley,” it’s the church, which is not the same thing.
They are a thing but also in sitcom land I feel like they are maybe a non-specific version of what properly are memorial halls, scout huts, church halls, town halls, temperance halls, masonic halls, etc.
"Some argue that these centres aren’t seen as desirable places to spend time – but they serve a vital function in communities across the country. De-stigmatising community centres and promoting the incredible work they do to bring people together will help invigorate and refresh the sector."
If the general impression is that they're where losers hang out, that would explain why so many older sitcoms are set there. I was googling the history but I wasn't making much progress.
https://www.club-insure.co.uk/community-centres-important/